Aryan Invasion Update

Makkhan Lal

Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) has been and continues to be one of the most debated and also the most devastating of historical, social, linguistic, archeological and anthropological theories. No other theory has generated more heat, pride, hatred and animosity as this one. Racialism, apartheid, nationalism etc. are all products of AIT. In an article in the last issue of Eternal India (Vol.1, No.9), Prof. Dilip K. Chakrabarti looked at the way AIT was used by the Indian historians, social reformers and indeed the politicians for various purposes. In the present article, Prof. Makkhan Lal looks at the genesis of the AIT itself from various angles likelinguistics, anthropology, lexicology and DNA evidences. The article shows that AIT began as an instrument of political objectives and continues to remain so. It was based on wild imagination of propagators and continues be so. The Aryans, the Aryan language and the Aryan homeland continue to remain elusive till date.

Continuance of the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) is virtually the lifeline of Indian Marxist historians and some exceptionally racist Westerners. It is the AIT, the bashing of ancient period, and the glorification of everything associated with the medieval period of history that gives our Marxist historians an international reputation of being 'eminent historians'. It also provides them with the much sought-after label of being 'secular historians' and 'mainstream historians'. Before discussing the issue, let us scrutinize a few examples of how some of our most eminent among the 'eminent historians' write, almost as eyewitnesses, about the AIT. Prof. R.S. Sharma describes the Aryan invasion, almost as an eyewitness, in the following words:

“It is difficult to say that all the earliest Aryans belonged to one race, but their culture was more or less same type…. Originally the Aryans seem to have lived somewhere in the steppes stretching from Southern Russia to Central Asia…. On their way to India the Aryans first appeared in Central Asia and Iran… A little earlier than 1500 B.C. the Aryans appeared in India.”1

Another 'secular' and 'eminent historian', Romila Thapar, who considers Mahmud of Ghazni as the greatest secular and humane Sultan2, writes about the Aryan invasion as follows:

“The Harappan culture [not civilization] lasted for about a thousand years. By 1500 B.C. when the Aryans began to arrive in India, the Harappan culture had collapsed… We do not know where they came from; perhaps they came from north-eastern Iran or the region near the Caspian Sea or Central Asia.”3

The above two quotations from two most 'eminent' among the 'eminent historians', sum up their approach to the issue. It may be mentioned here that the above two quotations are not from their writings in some remote antiquity but from the textbooks written for NCERT and are in vogue even today. Any other approach is certainly dumped as 'communal', 'lunatic' and 'Hindu chauvinistic' by eminent historians and racist Westerners donning the coat of archaeologists, historians, sanskritists and indologists. And, not surprisingly,such denigrations of the independent scholars (who differ with Marxist and racist historians) at the hands of Indian Marxist historians gets wide support in Western academia. Let us now look at the AIT from different perspectives.

Linguistic Evidence

Florentine merchant Filippo Sassetti, who lived in Goa for five years from A.D. 1583 to 1588, was struck by similarities between Sanskrit and European languages, especially Latin and Greek. Later, the relationship between the two languages was further elaborated by William Jones and many other scholars in the service of the East India Company. The efforts made towards understanding these linguistic similarities between Sanskrit on the one hand and Greek, Latin and some other modern European languages on the other gave rise to a new discipline called 'comparative linguistics'. Its birth had questionably motivated considerations under the guise of scholarly linguistic inquiry. In the last 200 years the discipline (if at all it is a discipline) of 'comparative linguistics' has shown a far greater variety of gymnastic exercises than the sport of gymnastic itself.

Since the earliest books of the Aryans, i.e. the Vedas, are written in Sanskrit, it came to be recognized as the language of the Aryans. In the beginning, all European languages, along with Sanskrit, came to be clubbed as Aryan languages, and Sanskrit got identified as not only the oldest of all but also the mother of all European languages. Lord Monboddo was convinced that “Greek was derived from Sanskrit.”4 Halhed said:

“I do not ascertain as a fact, that either Greek or Latin are derived from this language; but I give a few reasons wherein such a conjuncture might be found; and I am sure that it has a better claim to the honour of a parent than Phoenician or Hebrew.”5

Frederick Schlegel, a highly respected German linguist, on the basis of comparative grammar, wrote that “the Indian language is older and others [European languages] younger and derived from it.”6 Vans Kennedy was also of the opinion that “Sanskrit itself is a primitive language from which Greek, Latin and the mother of the Teutonic dialects were originally derived.”7 Thus, Sanskrit came to be recognized as the mother of “all the less ancient Indo-European languages, as well as the modern European tongues and dialects.”8

But these opinions did not last very long. Local pride, racial complexes and evangelical considerations overshadowed everything as a part of a shift from 'Indo-mania' to 'Indo-phobia'. Though William Jones agreed with the earlier view that “the language of Sanskrit is of a wonderful structure, more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin and more exquisitely refined than either human life would not be sufficient to make oneself acquainted with any considerable part of Hindu literature”, he could not accept the earlier view that Sanskrit is the 'mother' of all Aryan languages. He advocated that Sanskrit is just a 'sister', i.e. a codescendant of an earlier ancestor language, rather than the original one. Following the lead provided by Jones, F. Bopp wrote:

“I do not believe that Greek, Latin and other European languages are to be considered as derived from Sanskrit… I feel rather inclined to consider them together as subsequent variations of one original tongue, which however, the Sanskrit has preserved more perfect than its kindred dialects.”9

Bopp, of course, need not explain why and how Sanskrit has preserved that “original tongue” in a more “perfect” form “than its kindred dialects.” Nevertheless, once the identity of Aryans with languages and the White race got wider acceptance among European Scholars in the late 18th century, the battlefield came to be totally controlled by philologists. The kind of linguistic gymnastics that one witnesses among philologists of that period has rightly been described by Jim Shaffer as 'linguistic tyranny'.10 A search for the original homeland of a language, namely 'Proto-Indo-European', led scholars to different places and different scholars. This search for the imagined original language homeland also meant the search for the 'Original Homeland of Aryans'. This also gave rise to forging of labels such as the 'Indo-Aryan', 'Indo-European', 'Aryan languages', 'Indo-Aryan languages', and the 'Indo-European languages'. Sometime around the 1820s, the word 'Aryan' began to be dropped and it simply became 'Indo-European'. 11 Some German scholars even started using the term 'Indo-German' on the presumption that the Sanskrit and German languages, between them, covered the entire Indo-European speaking area – the farthest language to the East being Indic and German to the West.12

Sanskrit, even today, may be “the greatest language of the world” or even if it “is of a wonderful structure, more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin and more exquisitely refined than either human life would not be sufficient to make oneself acquainted with any considerable part of Hindu literature.” But so what? How could a language spoken by 'niggers' have been once the mother of languages today spoken by Europeans, i.e. the white people? This position could not be accepted even by William Jones and Max Mueller, who have been so wholesome in their praise for Sanskrit. The academic fairness and honest treatment to ancient literature and Sanskrit as a language ended just there.

Sanskrit was first demoted to the position of a mere sister of all the ancient and modern European languages, but later on, with further building-up of the language tree, it came to be demoted to the position of grand-daughter, when it got linked to the so-called Indo-Iranian family. Thus, the position is: Proto-Indo-European language gave birth to the Indo-Iranian, which in turn produced Sanskrit. The end of the search for the grand-mother of Sanskrit (i.e. the Proto-Indo-European) is still nowhere in sight. We still do not know what she may have looked like, of what colour she may have been, what may have been her physical and metaphysical structure. She still remains formless even in dreams. But let us see what a great play has been produced by the players in the game in the name of this 'Proto-Indo-European'. Quite often, these practitioners of philology were so illogical, so incoherent, so absurd, so adamant and arrogant, and indeed their impact has been so devastating that it has aptly been termed as 'linguistic tyranny' by Jim Shaffer, an American archaeologist. Shaffer has been made to pay the price for speaking the truth regarding philology and comparative linguistic.

Central Place Argument

Once Sanskrit was demoted from the honoured status of being mother to all Indo-European languages and made a mere sister of the European languages, a search started for the 'original tongue' i.e. the 'Proto-Indo-European'. This cleared the deck also for legitimizingthe Aryan invasion of India, a theory which suggested that Sanskrit was brought here from the place where this imaginary language called 'Proto-Indo-European' was spoken. In 1842, A.W. von Schlegel had claimed:

“It is completely unlikely that the migrations which had peopled such a large part of the globe would have begun at its southern extremity and would have continually directed themselves from there towards the northwest. On the contrary everything compels us to believe that the colonies set out in diverging directions from a central region.”13

And for Schlegel this central region consisted of the areas around the Caspian Sea.

A few contemporary scholars raised objections against such a view. One of them was Mountstuart Elphinstone, whose sympathetic view on the Indian education system is well known among the educationists. Elphinstone wrote:

“It [Sanskrit] is opposed to their [literature] foreign origin that neither the code [of Manu] nor, I believe, the Vedas, nor in any book is there any allusion to a prior residence or to a knowledge of more than the name of any country out of India… to say that [the originallanguage] spread from a central point is a gratuitous assumption and civilizations have not spread in a circle.”14

But with the increasing hold of the British on India, the colonial and the Evangelical interests soon became a force in shaping not only the Indian education system but also Indian history for the rest of the academic world. Following the lead provided by A.W. von Schlegel, Max Mueller reiterated his position on the issue of the Aryan invasion and said in 1887:

“If an answer must be given as to the place where our Aryan ancestors dwelt before their separation…. I should still say, as I said forty years ago, 'somewhere in Asia' and no more.”15

And this position has continued among the scholars of this day also. However, Srinivas Ayengar wrote in 1914, almost 75 years after Elphinstone:

“The Aryans do not refer to any foreign country as their original home, do not refer to themselves as coming from beyond India, do not name any place in India after the names of places in their original land as conquerors and colonizers do, but speak of themselvesexactly as sons of the soil would do. If they had been foreign invaders, it would have been humanly impossible for all memory of such invasion to have been utterly obliterated from memory in such a short time as represents the differences between the Vedic andAvestan dialects.”16

The fallacy of this central-place theory as the origin of an imaginary language and then spreading all around has been explained by Arvind Sharma17 with a contemporary example. Let us take the example of the English language. Consider a situation wherein after a couple of thousand years, people forget that England was the place where the English language developed and spread from, and start looking for the place of its origin. What will be the conclusion then? The theory of central place will exclude England in the very first instance, as it is located on the outskirts of the world of the English language. The United States of America would be the natural choice from where it spread to Europe and Asia in the East, and Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, etc in the East and Canada in the North.

Lexicographic Evidence

Lexicography (the vocabulary of spoken/written words) is another area which was pressed into service. Besides collecting a large number of the common words in various languages to prove their affinity, a number of words were chosen to prove the location of the language. For example, it has been argued that since there is no common word for the ocean in the Indo-European language, we can safely conclude that the Indo-European people were not aware of the ocean. Varadpande rightly presses the points that:

“If we carry this reasoning further we shall have to suppose that 'Indo-Europeans' were living in a region where there was no air and no water, since there are no common words for air and water in all the 'Indo-European' Languages.”18

The whole situation is that first a conjecture is turned into a hypothesis to be later treated as a fact to be used in support of a new theory. For instance, languages like Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Indo-Iranian and Proto-Dravidian are no more than hypothetical constructions, which may or may not have really existed; and yet these modern creations are often imposed on populations that lived thousands of years ago, to prove migrations theories. Shaffer writes:

“The Indo-Aryan invasion(s) as an academic concept in 18th-19th century Europe reflected the cultural milieu of that period. Linguistic data was used to validate the concept, which in turn, was used to interpret archaeological and anthropological data. What was theory became unquestioned fact that was used to interpret and organize all subsequent data. It is time to end the “linguistic tyranny” that has prescribed interpretative frameworks of pre-and proto-historic cultural development in South Asia.”19

The question of Aryan invasion/Aryan migration vis-à-vis philology has always been questioned. In the beginning of the last century, Aurobindo, while commenting on the philology, wrote:

“Comparative philology has hardly moved a step beyond its origins; all the rest has been a mass of conjectural and ingenious learning of which the brilliance is equalled only by the uncertainty and unsoundness… The very idea of science of language is chimera.”20

He further writes:

“The philologists indeed place a high value on their line of study – nor is that to be wondered at, in spite of all its defects – and persist in giving it the name of a Science; but the scientists are of a very different opinion. In Germany, in the very metropolis of Science and of philology, the word 'philology' has become a term of disparagement; nor are the philologist in a position to retort…When there is insufficient evidence or equal possibility in conflicting solutions, Science admits conjectural hypothesis as a step towards discovery. But the abuse of this concession to our human ignorance, the habit of erecting flimsy conjectures as the assured gains of knowledge is the curse of philology.”21

It has rightly been concluded that as a scientific subject, for its accuracy and scientific content, the subject of philology can be compared only to Parapsychology and ESP studies.22

Despite all these problems, many scholars have suggested that to ignore the linguistic conjectures, however absurd they may be, would not be correct. “This rejection of linguistics by critics of the AIT creates the impression that their own pet theory, which makes the Aryans into natives of India rather than invaders, is not resistant to the test of linguistics.”23 It is, therefore, important to point out that in the last 30 years, renowned linguists like Ram Bilash Sharma, S.S. Misra, S.G. Talgeri, N.S. Rajaram and Koenraad Elst have proved, on the basis of linguistic evidence itself, that this whole theory of Aryan invasion/migration is a fallacy.

The serious research carried out by Prof. S.S. Misra commands respect the world over. It is not possible to give here the details of research carried out by Prof. S.S. Misra, but it may be said that after a long and persistent research in the discipline, Misra concludes that Sanskrit is the language which has given birth to all the Indo-European languages. He gives evidence that Sanskrit is the oldest language of the Indo-European family, and the Rigveda is not only the oldest book of the Aryans but also that it belongs to at least 5000 B.C.24 Here it may be pointed out that there was a time when Misra himself believed that the Rigveda belongs to about 1200 B.C. and also all that which went with it. But not being dogmatic, he has been revising his opinion as per the evidence that he has been able to gather in course of his research.

When some Western scholars pooh-poohed Misra's research, a reprimand came from someone who himself is a serious Western scholar on the topic and a covert supporter of the Aryan Invasion Theory. He writes:

“Misra has dedicated a lifetime to writing dozens of specialized books on Indo-European languages, and, while one may not agree with some of his arguments… his observations…do merit a less flippant characterization and a more solid response.”25

Rigveda and Racialism

Subjugation of India by the British filled the masters with a desire to prove their all-round superiority, a glimpse of which can be had in the academic writings on distortions in Indian history by the British. Racialism was one angle of it. Writings of Grant, Mill, Marx, Macaulay and their accomplices denigrated Indian culture, civilization, society, history and religion.

Trautmann has traced the emergence of racialism and the development of physical anthropology as a resolution of the inescapable philological reality with the colonial need for cultural superiority over the natives of India.26 One of the most striking evidence of such an attitude is best seen in the writings of A.C.L. Carlleyle. At one place he writes:

“… We British European are Aryans, and far more pure and genuine Aryans than the Hindus, and no talk of the Hindus can alter our race, or make us any less or any different from what we are. It is the Hindus who have altered and deteriorated, and not we. The Hindus have become the coffee dregs, while we have remained the cream of the Aryan race. The Hindus are like the monkey, who pretend to treat some men with contempt because they had the bare white skins without any fur! The Hindus have become a sooty, dingy-coloured earthen pot, by rubbing against black aborigines rather too freely; and he consequently pretends to despise the while porcelain bowl.”

Some scholars think that the linguistic affinities of Indians and Europeans were also responsible for physical anthropology leading the whole debate towards racialism. 27 Most of the European scholars could not accept the view that Indians ('niggers', that is how most of the times Indian have been referred to in such writings) could have been once related to them and could have indeed been their forefathers, a conclusion which comparative linguistics was suggesting. Edwin Bryant expresses it in the following words:

“Even during the earlier phase of the homeland quest, when India was still a popular candidate, many scholars were uncomfortable about moving the Indo-Europeans too far from their biblical origins somewhere in the Near East. There were those among the British, in particular, whose colonial sensibilities made them reluctant to acknowledge any potential cultural indebtedness to the forefathers of the rickshaw pullers of Calcutta, and who preferred to hang on to the biblical Adam far than their European contemporaries. Even well after Adam was no longer in the picture, there was a very cool reception in some circles to the 'late Prof. Max Mueller [who had] blurted forth to a not overgrateful world the news that we and our revolted sepoys were the same human family' (Legge1902:710). Again, let us not forget the influence of the times: many scholars, quite apart from any consideration of India as a possible homeland, could not even tolerate the new found language relationship."28

Max Mueller himself was sad to note the mood of the day: “They would not have it, they would not believe that there could be any community origin between the people of Athens and Rome, and the so called niggers of India.”29

The newly developing science of physical anthropology was pressed into the service to project Aryans as tall, white-skinned, blue-eyed, with sharp and high nose, and dolichocephalic. The non-Aryans came to be identified as natives with dark skin, flat nose, short stature, and so on. The dasas mentioned in the Rigveda were made to represent non-Aryans, i.e., the indigenous local population of India. Thus, the frame of the invasion of Aryans and the subjugation of the non-Aryan local population got corroborated with the evidence from Physical Anthropology. India, thus, came to represent a nation which has been conquered again and again. So, what was morally or otherwise wrong if the British have now conquered this country?30

The racial theory had a devastating impact on the European polity. Each nation/state started claiming to be the real descendent of the Aryan race and considered others as inferiors. Max Mueller tried to intervene by declaring again and again:

“If I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull…How many understandings and how many controversies are due to what is deduced by arguing from language to blood-relationship or from blood-relationship to language… an ethnologist who speaks of an Aryan race, Aryan eyes and hair, and Aryan blood is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or brachycephalic grammar.”31

Alas! It was too late. The Jinn created by Max Mueller had now grown up and was no longer under his command. After all, was it not Max Mueller who had created this Jinn by suggesting that the same blood was running in the veins of both the white British conquerors and the conquered 'niggers'? In the twilight years of his life, Max Mueller realized the devastating impact of distortions that he had made in Indian history in order to please his employers and the newly acquired faith. He died a sad man, preaching at the end of his career things like India: What Can It Teach Us. He described India as:

“The country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow… a very paradise on earth … [a place where] human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life.”32

Max Mueller was quite aware of the extreme diatribes that could erupt due to his writings praising India. Anticipating such reactions he wrote that many of the critics would be “horror struck at the idea that the humanity they meet with [in India] should be able to teach us any lesson.”33

Racialism and DNA Evidence

In this context it will be useful to recall the studies carried out by K.A.R. Kennedy and his colleagues. Almost over five decades they carried out a detailed study of a large number of preand proto-historic skeletons found in excavations from a large number of archaeological sites from all over South Asia. On the basis of their research Kennedy and his colleagues conclude:

“As for the question of biological continuity within the Indus valley, two discontinuities appear to exist. The first occurs between 6,000 and 4,500 B.C…. The second occurs at some point after 800 B.C. but before 200 B.C.”34

Besides the studies of Kennedy and his colleagues on ancient skeletons, an important study has come out recently on modern humans. Keeping in mind the AIT, Kivishield and his colleagues carried out a detailed study on 'gene pools' of Western Eurasians and Indians. They studied the 'genetic inheritance aspect' of genes through the 'Mitochondrial DNA Test'.35 It may be mentioned here that the mitochondrial DNA test can reveal the whole history of genetic changes and mutations that may have taken place even in the remote times i.e. several thousand years ago. Kivishield and his colleagues have reached the conclusion that the Mitochondrial DNA, typical of Western Eurasians, is present among Europeans up to 70 per cent whereas among Indians it is only up to 5.2 per cent. The DNAgene pool of Western Europeans is very different from that of Indians. It has been very clearly stated that if there was any Aryan invasion of India a few thousand years ago, it must be visible in the mitochondrial DNA test in terms of a splash in percentage of Western Eurasian genes. But this is not so. Further, the percentage and types of Western Eurasian genes present among south Indians and north Indians are almost the same. This fact establishes that that there is no difference between the south Indian and north Indian gene pools, and the same goes against the Aryan invasion theory.

B.N. Datta in his detailed study on the issue of biological identity of the Aryans and the Harappans says that one of the reasons why Harappan civilization was declared non-Aryan and non-Vedic was because “no skull of dolichocephal-leptorrhine, tall statured and blond variety of men has been discovered in these remains”.36 The idea of equating such a group of people to the Indo-European is called Nordic or Proto-ordichypothesis. Citing the hypothesis of French school of Broca and that of Sergi, Datta points out that “it was brachycephalic Euroasiatics that were the carriers of the Indo-European languages to Europe. In that case they have been the carriers of Indo-Europeanism in India as well.”37 He argues that:

“We have no right to identify a particular biotype with the Vedic Aryans. If the unbiased opinion of the European savants is that the original Indo-European speaking cannot be identified with a people with a particular head-form, likewise we have no right to identifythe Vedic Aryans with a particular biotype.”38

After a detail examination of the Vedic literature Datta concludes that there is nothing in the texts to argue that the Vedic people were blond-haired Nordics and that there are no valid reasons to believe that the Harappan civilization people not being Aryans. The constant hunt for Nordic evidence in the Vedic and post-Vedic literature is the result of the “slave-psychology of the Indian minds”.39

Conclusions

Now over a period of 200 years, the meaning of 'Aryans' has been constructed and reconstructed as being nomadic, pastoral, sedentary agriculturists, dolichocephalic, brachycephalic, blond and fair, and from brown-haired to dark haired. The Aryan homeland has been located and relocated everywhere, virtually from the North Pole to the South Pole, and from the shores of the Atlantic to Chinese deserts – South India, North India, Central India, Tibet, Bactria, Iran, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, Lithuania, the Caucasus, the Urals, the Volga Mountains, South Russia, the Steppes of Central Asia, Western Asia, Palestine, Anatolia, Scandinavia, Finland, Sweden, the Baltic, western Europe, northern Europe, central Europe, and Eastern Europe.

The Aryan homeland, however, still remains elusive. J.P. Mallory has put the whole thing very succinctly:

“One does not ask 'where is the Indo-European homeland?' but rather they put it now?”40

The famous anthropologist, Edmund Leach of Cambridge University, has most aptly summed up the whole question of the Aryan Invasion Theory. In 1990, in his article, 'Aryan Invasions over Four Millennia', Leach writes:

“Why do serious scholars persist in believing in the Aryan invasion?… Why is this sort of thing attractive? Who finds it attractive? Why has the development of Sanskrit come so dogmatically associated with the Aryan invasion?… The details of this theory fit in with this racist framework… The origin myth of British Imperialism helped the elite administrators in the Indian Civil Service to see themselves as bringing 'pure' civilization to a country in which civilization of the most sophisticated kind was already nearly 6000 years old. Here, I will only remark that the hold of this myth on the British middle class imagination is so strong that even today, 44 years after the death of Hitler and 43 years after the creation of an independent India and independent Pakistan, the Aryan invasions of the second millennium BC are still treated as if they were an established fact of history….The Aryan invasion never happened at all.”41

(Prof. Makkhan Lal is the founder Director of Delhi Institute of Heritage Research and Management, an institution of higher learning and research. Before joining DIHRM, he had taught in the Banaras Hindu University and Aligarh Muslim University. He was the first Charles Wallace Fellow in Cambridge University and Senior Fellow at Clare Hall. He has published 16 books and over 150 research papers.)